


Cling

by badboy_fangirl



Category: Lost
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-03
Updated: 2012-08-03
Packaged: 2017-11-11 09:13:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/476949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badboy_fangirl/pseuds/badboy_fangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-series, post-island Kate and Sawyer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cling

By the time they land in Fiji, Kate can't believe she's living through this twice. 

The first time she left the island, half of her heart stayed behind with Sawyer; today, she leaves the rest of it with Jack. If it weren't for Claire's hand tightly gripping her own, she wouldn't know what to do.

As they exit the plane, there are a lot of questions asked, and Frank actually handles them well, explaining how they'd gotten off course, crash landed, and then it had taken him a week to make the repairs so they could fly out.

All in all, it's much easier than the press conference they'd had to have when she was part of the Oceanic 6.

James looks lost, shell-shocked, completely mesmerized and almost afraid, though it doesn't quite touch his eyes. In the curve of his mouth sits uncertainty, and his forward movements look less than confident. He glances at her and says, "Sonofabitch. The real world, huh, Freckles?"

She forces her quivering lips into a smile and nods her head.

*

Money isn't a problem, once she can access her accounts, so she books three seats to Sydney.

"Why three?" Claire asks, her hair freshly washed and her face scrubbed free of jungle grime. She looks young again, like the girl Kate had first met on the beach so many years before.

"James is coming with us."

"Oh," Claire says. "I'm glad."

Kate is too.

*

Aaron runs to her, his arms and legs wrapping around her like vines. It's only been ten days since she saw him, but she swears he's already grown taller. 

Mrs. Littleton embraces Claire; her sobs resonate through the air.

James stands back from all of them, looking uncomfortable.

"Baby, this is your mommy, Claire," Kate says and she nudges him towards his real mother. Claire looks terrified, but then something magical happens, a moment where biology overcomes everything.

"Hi, Mommy Claire," Aaron says.

When Claire reaches out for him, he willingly goes into her arms.

*

They only stay for a week (they being James and Kate), and then they fly to LA and stay one night in Kate's house. It feels resoundingly empty without Aaron. She calls a real estate agent and tells him to put the house on the market. 

She and James rent a car and drive to Albequerque. All Kate says is, "You have to see her, at least once," and he doesn't argue, though his eyes finally show emotion, fear and hope mixing wildly.

He nods, and says, "After that I have to go to Florida."

"What's in Florida?"

"Juliet's sister."

*

To Cassidy's credit, despite her ill opinions of James, she'd never spoken badly of him to Clementine. All the little girl knew was that her daddy had not been able to be a part of her life, but because she wasn't quite seven, things like _prison_ and _deserted islands_ hadn't been explained to her either.

As they walk up to the door, and even though Kate has told him this so he knows that his daughter isn't going to have a completely skewed vision of him to start off with, his hand grabs at hers.

His fingers don't intertwine with Kate's, but their palms slide against each other and he squeezes her flesh almost painfully. Kate can't help it, she's spent the last three years being a mother, and she says the most generic, reassuring thing she can, "It's gonna be fine."

James smirks his disbelief at her, his dimples flashing, but he says, "Ya think?"

"I know," she says with false bravado.

*

It's not as awkward as one might guess. Cassidy brings them all glasses of lemonade and Clementine shows James some of her art projects from school. He's genuinely interested, and Kate feels a bloom of peace in her chest. Jack would be glad, she thinks, that she brought Claire back to Aaron and James back to Clementine (even though she never told him about Sawyer's daughter), but somehow she knows that now, it wouldn't bother Jack.

Now, he would understand that the relationship between parent and child is so important; her own realization that doing everything you can to understand one another and really _know_ each other is what makes her sure he would support it.

She thinks, maybe after Florida, she and James will take a trip to Iowa, and he'll have to hold her hand just so she can get up the driveway at her mother's house.


End file.
